20 posts tagged with "poetry"

I’m looking at the two versions of of a poem I wrote, “Reach” (As of 10/18/2017, it’s still just sitting in a folder on my computer).

The first, what’s more natural to me at this point, separates lines into different grammatical parts. For instance, in the first stanza, I separate the three prepositional clauses into their own lines. I follow the same thing throughout the poem, actually. It’s all separated into different grammatical parts.

I have read poems that do not follow this method (some more than others), and it’s these that the second version emulates.

I have been making a lot of “development documents” for the novel, but I typically just draft when writing shorter pieces. I know I have a tendency to do development documents for things I’m afraid of getting wrong, and I think I also do it for the novel because I haven’t wanted to do “unnecessary work,” knowing how much time might be “wasted” if I write things that’ll just be thrown out.

In my drafting process, I read what I have over and over again, and when I do, if something strikes me as needing to be changed, I do it. Often this brings something else to mind or sight that needs to be changed, so I do that as well. And I keep reading and changing.

Wood pulp,

Dried and bleached by sleep,

Laid and stacked,

White for writing,

Dropped from a height

Christ

------If not

----For Love,

--Fear would

Win.

For significance,

Find something people will worship.

For a living,

Find something people will pay for.

For service,

Find something people need.

For love,

Find someone.

Learning to art

Is like tending a thistled field.

Until you plow, it chokes its fruit.

But thorns scratch

And catch

An oak looms in the garden,

My effigy of pain,

I’ve not climbed since May’s rain,

When soaked hands slipped, bones broke, skin ripped,

And I ran inside, alone.

Blackbeard in an Armani

His cross-bone skibbies ride over a sharkskin belt

A white-and-red mint hides his Gehenna breath

Clean-shaven scars swath his cheeks and chin

And his sword arm waves against the sky

Boba Fett

was chompchompchomped

he thundered

over ship and sky

by jetpack

This is a poem to Jon, my true friend,

To a vagrant like me, a road on which to end,

A beachfront retreat without fence or police.

Against my gusts and drops and shouting hail,

He stood, anchored, like a bastion, laughing—

Silent, shoulders bobbing, drool slathering his chin;

His stomach, eyes, face, and dignity all puckered.